Labor chief visits solar startup

Wednesday

Mar 31, 2010 at 2:00 AM

HOPEWELL JUNCTION — Green jobs are one way out of recession and back to a competitive American manufacturing sector. That was the message Labor Secretary Hilda Solis delivered Tuesday, when she and Rep. John Hall, D-Dover Plains, toured SpectraWatt, a new manufacturer that is set to start production this spring on crystalline silicon solar cells.

Christian Livermore

HOPEWELL JUNCTION — Green jobs are one way out of recession and back to a competitive American manufacturing sector.

That was the message Labor Secretary Hilda Solis delivered Tuesday, when she and Rep. John Hall, D-Dover Plains, toured SpectraWatt, a new manufacturer that is set to start production this spring on crystalline silicon solar cells.

"America can be No. 1 again," Solis said. "We can compete with India and China, but there has to be political will."

The Obama administration and Hall have repeatedly touted green jobs as both a path out of recession and a way to help America regain a manufacturing base. The federal stimulus package included funds for renewable energy projects.

"It's been long enough that we've been buying oil from the Saudis or clothing from China," Hall said Tuesday. "The secretary and I share the belief that we shouldn't go from importing oil to importing Chinese and German solar panels."

SpectraWatt, a startup spun off from Intel last year, employs about 37 people at the Hopewell Junction plant now, and is expected to employ about 100 by the end of the year and 150 a year after that.

The company got a variety of state and local incentives to come to the Hudson Valley, including $3 million from Empire State Development, $1.5 million from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority and grants from Dutchess County and Central Hudson Gas & Electric.

"We would not be here without those incentives," said David O'Connor, vice president of business development for SpectraWatt.

The jobs are much needed in an area that's seen thousands of manufacturing sector layoffs in recent years from such companies as IBM and NXP, which used to occupy the SpectraWatt facility. Dutchess County's unemployment rate was 8.3 percent in February. Orange County's jobless rate of 8.7 percent last month was the highest it's been in 20 years, according to the state Labor Department.

A number of former IBM and NXP employees now work at SpectraWatt, including the senior equipment engineer, Devon Pitt, and the senior process engineer, Ka Man Lau.

Lau worked at the facility for 25 years, through its various incarnations under IBM, Royal Philips Electronics and NXP, before it closed. She was unemployed two months before she got hired at SpectraWatt, but many others weren't as lucky.

"The NXP closing left 600 people unemployed," she said. "Managers all the way to engineers and others had no jobs."